Economics and similar, for the sleep-deprived

A subtle change has been made to the comments links, so they no longer pop up. Does this in any way help with the problem about comments not appearing on permalinked posts, readers?

Update: seemingly not

Update: Oh yeah!

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Sauce for the anti-Semitic goose is sauce for the Islamophobic gander, and they're neither of them particularly nice sauces

Me elsewhere ... Martin Bright is clearly correct that the Daily Telegraph has less than fuck-all evidence to connect Zvi Heifetz and the Israeli Embassy with David Abrahams' donations to the Labour Party, but if he's keen on that (and particularly if he's going to assert that this is an anti-Semitic theory based on Abrahams being Jewish, rather than a normal conspiracy theory based on Abrahams being an associate of Heifetz[1]), then he shouldn't try to push exactly the same sort of theories himself, trying to link Labour to Bashar Assad among others, on the basis of exactly the same sort of weak friends-of-friends connection.

This has been yet another public service announcement from the Campaign For Real Conspiracy Theories.

[1] Heifetz is a fave rave of the conspiracy crowd. He used to work for Vladimir Gussinsky (a Russian oligarch now living in Israel) and certainly has fronted for deals in the past - carrying the bag for one of Gussinsky's investments was what landed him in front of the Israeli cops in a money-laundering investigation. (By the way, nearly every news report gets this wrong - the investigation was into breaches of money-laundering reporting requirements, which is a serious offence but not the same thing as laundering itself, although they do correctly report that Heifetz and Gusinsky were both cleared). His daughter did time for drug smuggling in Peru, which also lights up the conspiracy bunch, but there is surprisingly little proper evidence connecting Heifetz with yer-actual parapolitics. In any case, it is by no means clear to me that Abrahams and Heifetz were particularly close - it is a bit interesting that Labour Friends of Israel had so damned many members who ended up as the focus of funding scandals of one sort or another, but this probably just reflects the fact that it was a useful club to belong to for ambitious Labour Party hacks rather than anything else.1 comments this item posted by the management 12/05/2007 05:32:00 AM